Primer for the New Millennial Cook

10 Dishes Every Man Should Know How to Make

When I first moved out of my parents’ house at 18, I didn’t even know how to work a washing machine. I’ll never forget my older roommate Josh showing me how to push “on” on the rickety washer out behind our Pismo Beach townhouse complex. But he’d smoke weed with his nagging girlfriend all day and would eat takeout every night — he was 10 years older than me and still didn’t know how to cook shit.

I even took Home Ec in high school but I can’t recall a single useful cooking lesson. But I dunno, I also took photography, interior design, and volleyball, and I can’t remember much about F-stops, sconces, or overhand serves either.

Many of you millennials are in the same boat, and I think the main problem is that when we move away from home, nobody sits us down and explains how we need to approach cooking and eating. Instead we get lots of cook books as gifts that we never read, or we nod off to instructional talk shows on The Food Network, which suck your life away with endless dumbed-down baby-talk explanations of pretend restaurant food. Trust me, leave the restaurant food to the pros and stick to basic stuff.

And don’t get distracted by all the clickbait recipes for shit like Mozzarella Stick Waffles or Guacamole Onion Rings you see all over Facebook. Millennials seem to latch onto these childish flavor-bombs of kiddie cereal cuisine the same way they let brightly colored Bernie Sanders infographics shape their worldview. Let’s put in a bit more effort here, guys. Cooking can be very simple and straightforward, but it does take a little common sense and a bit of elbow grease.

Honestly, I think I’m a fairly decent cook — but that’s only because I have a short list of comically easy dishes that I know how to make, which I can then endlessly modify and tinker with to keep things interesting.

When you’re learning how to cook, it’s easy to get bogged down with 1/4 teaspoon here and 425 degrees there — bake for 41 minutes exactly. We get lost in precise measurements we pull out of recipes and we fail to grasp concepts. That’s why I think the best approach is to focus on techniques, ratios, and flavor profiles, instead of cheffy 19-ingredient mac’n cheese recipes or homemade tiramisu formulas that you’re never going to remember anyway.

So here’s a primer on some basic dishes that I wish someone would’ve written for me when I moved out on my own.

Below are 10 things that every man should know how to cook — they’re all very basic staples that you can customize based on whatever you’re into, but the foundation is what’s important.

To get started you will need the following: a cast iron skillet, an enameled cast iron dutch oven (pot), a couple knives, and obviously some regular kitchen stuff like a spatula, cutting board, wooden spoons, etc. Most of these tools speak for themselves but cheap knives are sort of tricky — don’t just buy whatever blades are on sale at Pottery Barn. Just pick up one of these Old Hickory knives for cutting meat, and one of these silly things for chopping vegetables.

1. Eggs

Every man needs to know how to properly cook eggs. I remember trying to fry eggs in a dry, warped, Teflon skillet when I was 19 with my buddy Dylan cheering me on. We used the term “cooking eggs” as if it were some rebellious activity for non-grown ups. Egg shells would get mixed in with broken yolks, they were dry and overcooked, it was a mess. But this was before Youtube and we didn’t know any better.

For simple fried eggs, scrambled eggs, or omelets, the concept is fairly similar: use low to medium heat, pay attention, and use butter liberally. Techniques vary from simple cooking slowly, to agitating the eggs constantly as they cook to create smaller creamy curds. You’ll learn that eggs are easy, but also easy to mess up. All I usually do is turn the burner dial up to 5ish, add some butter, and add the eggs when the butter is bubbling. Then season with salt and pepper and put a lid over the skillet after a few minutes to let the steam cook the top of the egg until they seem done.

2. Roast chicken

This is a dish that always impresses guests, which is insane because it’s ridiculously easy to make. Follow Thomas Keller’s advice: salt and pepper, high heat, butter. Put the bird in your skillet, season it inside and out with kosher salt and black pepper, and roast it at 450 for like 45 minutes, depending on the size of the bird (this technique works best with smaller 3ish lb birds.) You’ll know its done when the leg joint feels loose and the juices in the cavity run clear.

Carve it by pushing each leg down towards your cutting board, which should dislocate it, and let you slice down through the joint. Then remove the breasts by slicing down along the breast plate, leaving the wings attached. Now you’ve got two leg pieces and two breast/wing pieces. Plenty of food for two people or for a couple meals.

And you can apply the same concept to other birds. My brother in law went on a hunting trip a few weeks ago and brought me back a band tailed pigeon. I don’t know how to cook pigeon, but pigeons are birds, so I just applied what I knew about chicken and it turned out delicious.

3. Fried chicken

Fried chicken is intimidating but it doesn’t have to be difficult — you don’t need to invest in some high tech deep fryer to do it. You just need proper fat and a heavy cast iron pot, which you now have.

My favorite fat for deep frying is grass-fed beef tallow, which you should be able to find if you live near a hipster butcher shop. It’s actually what McDonald’s used to fry their french fries in until vegans ruined the fun by lobbying against animal fat, and in favor of allegedly healthier trans-fat canola oil. Just know that tallow is rendered from the fat surrounding the cow’s kidneys, and olive oil (which you cannot use for deep frying) is pressed from actual olives. Canola, corn, and other vegetable oils must be chemically extracted from the plant, resulting in a cancerous nightmare and an inferior product.

If you don’t want buy whole birds and break them down, just buy chicken thighs for this one. Not only are thighs the best part of the chicken, they’re also cheap. You don’t need any batters or egg washes or spice blends. Just heat the fat to 360 in your cast iron pot, and season the chicken with salt, pepper, Lawry’s and maybe a bit of Old Bay. After you season each piece, dredge it in flour and drop it in the hot oil — 5 minutes skin-side down, 15 minutes skin-side up, and 5 more with the skin down again. See the full explanation here.

The chicken pieces should be approximately the color of evening program actor George Lopez. Look at several photos of George Lopez and take an average, if you are not familiar with his work (several computer programs are available which can do this).

One quick note on the grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef debate: you can buy into all the Organic, non-GMO, sustainable, humanely raised shit if you want to, but keep in mind that animals taste like what they eat. Conventional beef cattle spend the last 6 or so months of their lives being fed nothing but steamed corn flakes — essentially bland starch — which the animal then converts into muscle mass and fat. So it’s no surprise that animals finished on pasture develop much more flavor, but it can often be very expensive and of inferior quality depending on the producer. It’s up to you, but don’t buy into any of the moral obligations that come along with buying food. Focus on quality and you’ll gravitate towards the more “sustainable” and “humane” products.

4. Pork chops

The key to a good pork chop is to properly sear them, depending on their thickness, and roasting them in the oven for a few minutes to cook them through. You’ll know they’re done when they have a nice bouncy feel when you push down with your finger — they won’t feel squishy and flaccid like they do when they’re raw. This concept also applies to lamb chops, pork tenderloin, thin steaks (more on steak later), fish filets, and anything that cooks fairly quickly.

The most important part of these dishes is the pan sauce at the end. When your pork chops are done, you’ll still have crispy tasty bits stuck to the bottom of the skillet. Now you deglaze by splashing in some wine while the pan is still hot, and scraping those bits off with a spoon.

I like to always have cheap wine on hand — preferably in a jug like Carlo Rossi — but you can also use a few splashes of stock, beer, or even bourbon (which is flammable). People often say that you should never cook with wine you wouldn’t drink, which bullshit because even cheap shitty wine is still tasty.

Then you let the liquid boil to reduce until it’s starting to get a thick — takes a few minutes. Then you take it off the heat, let it cool for a minute or two, stir in a few knobs of butter, and pour it over your chops and whatever veggies you roasted or steamed or sauteed. With these types of dishes I like to arrange the plate in an overly symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing manner, and then garnish with some minced parsley or other green herb. Do likewise.

5. Pot roast

By pot roast I just mean any big chunk of cheap beef, cut up and cooked very slowly in an oven (or crockpot). I do this about once a week and I’ll have enough leftovers for at least two more meals. Start with a big piece of beef chuck — 4 or 5 lbs — and cut it up into large chunks. Then sear them in your cast iron pot. Just coat the bottom with olive oil, sprinkle the meat with salt and pepper, and brown on all sides over medium/high heat. You’ll need to do a few chunks at a time so remove each piece when it’s done to make room for the next one.

While you’re browning the beef, cut up your veggies. Generally I start with what the chefs refer to as a mirepoix, which I think means chopped up carrots, celery, and onion in French. You can add some leeks and garlic, but I stay away from starchy shit like potatoes or turnips here, as it gives the liquid a milkiness that I don’t need.

Deglaze your pan with some wine or something, and add your veggies. Let them soften for a bit, and then put the beef chunks (and any liquid on the plate) back in the pot, on top of the veggies. Now all you do is add some liquid — again, cheap wine is always a safe bet here, but so is Miller High Life or chicken stock. Pour in enough liquid so that the meat is half submerged (you may need to add more later as it cooks).

Throw in a few sprigs of some aromatic shit like parsley or rosemary, put the lid on, and put it in the oven for around 5 hours on low — very low, like 275. You could probably get away with two hours, or let it go as long as 10 hours, depending on what you’re using.

This technique applies to most tough, cheap cuts of meat. You could use short ribs, bottom round, oxtail, pork belly, etc. Skip the wine and do this with pork shoulder and you’ve got pulled pork.

When it’s done, take out the meat, and strain all the liquid into a small pan. The veggies will probably be too soft to eat so throw them out. But the liquid is gold, so let it boil for a bit to reduce, then add some butter and maybe some salt. Taste as you go. Pour the sauce over the meat along with some roasted Brussels sprouts or mashed sweet potatoes. You will be dumbfounded that you were able to cook something that tastes this good.

6. Risotto

I almost left this one out, and you can learn another fancy, restauranty dish instead. But this is a simple and easy one to keep on hand in the event that you’re trying to impress a lady. And it’s also a good technique that helps you understand the role of starch, rice, and pasta-type dishes.

Like many things that taste good, all it needs is quality ingredients and time. Get some good arborio rice, heat some oil in your cast iron pot, and heat up a liquid in another pot. This time you don’t want to use alcohol — generally chicken or beef stock.

I won’t go through all the steps and there are a million recipes out there, but the creamy texture comes from adding small amounts of broth to the rice, garlic, and veggies, which you’ll be simmering in your cast iron pot. And each time the liquid is absorbed, you stir in another ladle full. Over time the rice releases the starch as it cooks, resulting in a very creamy texture. Throw in some lobster, seared scallops, or other expensive meat, and it’s the perfect “come over to my place and let me cook you dinner” dinner.

Finish it off by topping it with some grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese — the real shit, not the fake Parmesan you put on pizza. The stuff is amazing and lasts forever so always have a chunk of it in the fridge.

7. Bread

Making bread is so easy that there is absolutely no excuse to not know how to do it. All you have to do is follow the famous No-Knead bread recipe, which is more of a ratio/concept than a strict recipe. The only catch is that it’s a very time consuming process — you’ll start it one day and finish it the next. But the amount of actual work that goes into it is almost zero. You’ll need your cast iron dutch oven, some good all purpose flour, instant yeast, and some liquid (usually water): 3 cups flour, 1 and 5/8th cups water, 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast, and 1 1/4 teaspoon salt. Mix that shit together and the yeast will do the rest. Once your dough is ready, put your cast iron pot in the oven and blast it as hot as it will go, like 500 degrees. Once it’s hot, drop in the dough and bake it with the lid on for 30 minutes, and then another 20 or so with the lid off.

And I’ve modified this recipe countless ways, using beer and wine yeast — I’ve even substituted carrot juice and added some dried berries. Not only is it easy, it is unbelievably good. Learning it will help you understand the chemistry of baking, what the yeast is doing, how dough leavens, how crust develops. Then you can decide if you want to go down the road of learning how to make other pastries and shit, but baking is a very complicated science that I don’t have time for.

8. Hot Dogs

This one might surprise you, but not only are properly prepared hot dogs delicious, it’s a useful technique for cooking other sausages as well — bratwurst, boudin, Merguez.

You were probably expecting hamburgers to be on this list as an essential component of American cuisine, but I’m not a huge fan of home-made burgers. You’re not gonna do better than In N Out, Shake Shack, 5 Guys, or the other cheap-but-good burger joints. And the higher-end hamburgers are more involved than you’d expect — aged cuts of beef, premium whole muscle, custom grinding, etc. If you want a burger, go out.

As easy as hot dogs are, people always manage to fuck them up. First of all, start with a high quality product — preferably a grass-fed naturally cured frankfurter if you can find them, or just go with a quality dog by Nathan’s Famous or Boar’s Head.

Grab your skillet, heat a small amount of water so that the hot dogs will be barely submerged. Let the water boil until the sausages are cooked through (or heated through), and either allow the water to evaporate or dump it out. Then just throw in a knob of butter and brown the dogs, giving them an awesome blistered charred crispy skin. Use the cheapest buns in the bread aisle, and top with some nice mustard and relish — maybe even some sauerkraut. Serve with a Clausen pickle spear, which are in the refrigerated section if you can’t find them.

9. Roasted vegetables

This is more of a shopping exercise than a recipe, and it’s the only side dish on the list. There are tons of different veggie side options, and roasting them is only one approach. But one thing you’ll have to consider is the way you shop and plan for these meals. When you’re shopping it’s easy to convince yourself that you’ll use an entire bulk bag of arugula or baby kale throughout the next few days — you’re going to make lots of salads or something.

But here’s the rule: if you’re buying green things from the refrigerated fake rainstorm, mist-spray area of the produce department, 60 percent of that shit will be wilted and mushy before you use it. You’re not going to make a bunch of salads.

This is why we must all follow what I call the root vegetable buying protocol. Brussels sprouts might be one of the few exceptions, but when you’re shopping for produce, stick to roots like sweet potatoes, parsnips, turnips, beets, onions, garlic, rutabaga, celery root, etc. Because if you forget about them at the bottom of your crisper for a couple weeks, they’ll still be good to go. And they all work well in the same way, which is to simply peel them, chop them, toss them in olive oil with salt and pepper, and throw them in the oven. The exact temp doesn’t matter — some veggies work better at 450, some at 350. Experiment. You’ll know their done when they taste good.

10. Steak

This is going to be a bit of an extension of my previous comments on grass-fed vs commodity beef. What many people don’t realize is that there is no perfect recipe for the perfect steak. The best way to cook a great steak is to start with a great steak. If you start with a shitty steak, youre going to end up with a shitty steak. If you’re okay with commodity beef, the USDA has a grading system that can be a decent indicator of quality; Prime (marbled, tender), Choice (less marbling), and Select (older, leaner).

You can buy grass-fed beef in most grocery stores now, but grass-fed can be a buzzword that lets producers hide behind inferior quality. Grass is a seasonal plant, just like tomatoes. Good producers will almost always have a limited, seasonal availability. Like wine, grass-fed beef is a very difficult, time consuming product to make, and likewise it can be tough to find and expensive.

If you’re interested in exploring this further, nobody has done a better job explaining beef than Mark Schatzker, who has searched all over the world for the best steak. His findings are a complex matter, but the short story is, seek out good purveyors and be prepared to spend top dollar. And if you’re fine staying in the commodity beef arena, it’s hard to beat Costc0 — their pricing on USDA Choice and Prime cuts is the lowest you’ll find.

Once you’ve found a ribeye, NY strip, or other cut of meat that you’ve deemed worthy of your time, take care preparing it, and follow the simple method of searing, roasting, basting, and resting. But be careful, you don’t want to fuck up a $40+ piece of meat — which David Chang would say, “makes you an asshole.”

You could also go the opposite route with a reverse sear, where you slowly roast the steak first and then sear it off after it’s cooked through. Either way, steak is very similar to eggs in that you need to pay attention to the heat — you’re trying to get a flavorful char on the outside without overcooking the inside.

And there you have it. Ten dishes that every man should know. You’ll never go hungry, and you’ll be able to stop spending thousands of dollars on shitty takeout food. If you happen to find yourself hosting Thanksgiving dinner, now you’ve had some experience roasting a chicken, which is very similar to roasting a turkey. If you’re hungry and all you have is a frozen tilapia filet and a quarter bottle of flat Champagne, you can roll that into a pretty solid dish if you play it right.

And while you’re not an expert, but you should be able to grasp a lot of the concepts that underly many other dishes you’ll come across — even more intricate ones that require a lot more finesse and nuance. Let’s not start blow-torching creme brûlée just yet, but let’s at least understand the staples of American cuisine, which is, after all, where our bread is buttered.

Originally published on StreetCarnage.com